WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th October, 2020) The US government has chosen Texas A&M University to set up a consortium of universities conducting research into the development of hypersonic weapons systems, the Department of Defense announced in a press release.
"The Department of Defense announced it will be awarding Texas A&M University's Engineering Experiment Station $20 million per year over a 5-year period to establish and manage a University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH)," the release said on Monday.
Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Kratsios said the new center would seek to speed up the usually much slower transition process from original research and development to the eventual deployment of significant numbers of operational weapons systems with the US armed forces.
"This first-of-its kind consortium will be critical to advancing hypersonics research and innovation, a key priority of the Department of Defense. Importantly, through collaborative industry and academic partnerships, it will also accelerate technology transfer and strengthen workforce development to meet the nation's future warfighting needs," he said.
The center will be directed by experts from Texas A&M, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Minnesota, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Arizona, the University of Tennessee Space Institute, Morgan State University, the California Institute of Technology, Purdue, the University of California-Los Angeles, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, the release said.
